Hacker News Reader

itsthejbon Using Swift for Scripting (2019)

I’ve been experimenting with swift scripting recently. Whilst in theory it could be a great substitute for Python/Ruby for dev tooling in iOS teams, I’ve yet to find an IDE setup that’s satisfactory - Xcode needs to be tricked to get something working, and has bugs/restrictions that make it a dead end

itsthejbon “My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen”

Well this sure is a pretty fascinating case, if it proves to be true, which it _seems_ to be?

One thing I'm not seeing mentioned here is discussion of the password for that wallet.dat. This reminds me of back during the 2017 bull run, when I tried to help a friend recover a forgotten password for a bottom 6-figures Dash coin wallet. We went even so far as spinning up some EC2 GPU instances to run Hashcat. In the end, considering the modest value of the wallet, it wasn't cost effective to brute-force. I think we got up to the threshold of 7-9 characters where the time/cost becomes prohibitive.

So I'm wondering, assuming the guy even HAD a password on the database file, or that we didn't have a password.txt on this server, I wonder about the sequence of events where:

1. Server is hacked a few months ago, either knowingly (target a core dev), or farmed (searching for vulnerable servers, grabbing high value assets such as wallet.dats) 2. wallet.dat is copied. IIRC gives free access to the public key, therefore revealing a high value wallet 3. In the meantime, attacker employs compute resources to crack the private key 4. After some months of doing this, finds the passwords, empties the wallet

This would seem to match my quick reading of the events. I'm now intrigued to do some sums to work out the feasibility of doing this when a 7-figure wallet is found. This is assuming compute prices are that much cheaper than 5 years ago, and that this might be a independent attacker, not some NK-style state actor.

I may come back to this and do the calculations...

itsthejbon Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

Interesting side-point: I live in a rental only high rise development in London. When I moved in it was about half full. During the year it’s been almost completely rented out, and this is pretty obvious from the rapid increase of people in the common areas

My point: if it wasn’t rental only, I really wonder how many neighbours I’d have in a development like this, which seems like it would be a prime target for shoebox buyers around the upper-middle of the market

itsthejbon ‘We kind of lost track’: how SBF blurred lines between FTX and Alameda

Is this the reductio ad absurdum of VC culture, whereby founders stop even considering that overall profit is (eventually) an end goal, and that VCs don’t pick from an endless money tree? In the case of FTX, some reports seem to suggest that VCs themselves have lost sight of this

itsthejbon Being fatter than Homer Simpson

Better food, yes. But also LESS food. I know it’s controversial to say so, but getting fat is a result of _eating too much!_. Yes, calorie dense food sure speeds up the process, but at the end of the day it’s a deficit between calories in, and calories burnt.

Source: experimented a fair amount with dieting/fasting in my 30s. When you talk about this with people, it’s startling how many believe that skipping some meals is dicing with death. Hardly surprising people struggle to lose weight, when they refuse to try changing the key variables

itsthejbon Being fatter than Homer Simpson

It pains me to see other Brits of my generation using Imperial as the norm

itsthejbon Twitter Android app dev fired: Guess it's official now.

Seems from my outsider perspective that this kind of hyper-aggressive and combative tone is like a currency on Twitter… There seem to be those for whom the Twitter bubble is _everything_ (which would include Elon), and then you have the other 99.9% of humanity who look on with confusion. And the 0.1% of the super engaged don't seem to be able to fathom that the Twitter bubble still exists _within_ reality, where actions can have consequences

itsthejbon Just how complicated could it be to register a German company?

And if you, for some reason, happen to have a few sacks of Euros just, you know, lying around, Deutschland will quite happily accept that house purchase in good old untraceable cash. Freshly laundered

itsthejbon Covid laws took away our rights with flick of a pen. Don’t let that happen again

It’s ok - they can now blame it all on BoJo, and rewrite the history books with themselves on the “right side”

itsthejbon Fake Men on Hinge

I’ve used Hinge somewhat. Regarding the roses, and the “premium profiles” (I can’t remember the feature name), I considered this a boon - if you’re a normal guy, those are the women you should _avoid_. Conversely, if you’re a woman who really does want a relationship, then you don’t want to be one of those profiles!

itsthejbon Ask HN: Why are banking/finance apps so heavy?

This is so true. Long ago I had a telesales warm calling job for a mortgage product. The number of customers who had all their financial services from a single one of the big few (U.K.) banks was telling

itsthejbon Oberlin College to pay $36M to bakery owners who were falsely accused of racism

There is an example that always comes to my mind regarding this “logic”, and which I think used to crop up from other commentators around this. It’s potentially even more powerful since it comes from the other side of the political fence: The beginning of The War On Terror (™), and “if you aren’t with us, you’re with the terrorists”. This is exact the same manipulative fallacy. However, pointing this out would need to assume those using it are good faith actors, whereas I’d suggest this argument is evidence of bad faith

itsthejbon The toll of dating app burnout

This is a very real problem! I didn’t actually work out the protocol here, seems tricky to ask for than a handful of people out, before you might get into trouble

Alternatively, aim to make friends, and meet THEIR friends. This is always the absolutely best way

itsthejbon The toll of dating app burnout

Swing dancing is indeed a great one. Although I did run into the issue that, eventually it didn’t seem likely to REALLY be my thing, and for men there is actually a definite level of competitiveness to be aware of. That said, people were diverse, friendly, and the vibe is very cheerful and healthy

itsthejbon Complete Introduction to Particles in Japanese

“I went to THE post office”, “I went to THE train station”. These are typically used without context, and are exceptions that confuse learners, particularly those who are learning about articles for the first time.

Regarding “I go to Church”, the verb to go here doesn’t actually mean movement, it’s a euphemism for “I worship”. Same with “temple”. If you say “I go to a/the church” you are actually stating movement towards a definite or indefinite place.

Again, these are challenging subtleties for language speakers where all nouns are conceptual. And most native speakers can’t explain these exceptions spontaneously

itsthejbon Meatless meat is nothing new

His late wife… she was however a pretty significant figure in modern vegetarianism

itsthejbon Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

Overseas investment in something so unproductive as housing is deeply problematic, yes

itsthejbon Ask HN: What are you reading? (Aug 2022)

The Silence of the Lambs. As someone who mostly reads non fiction, it’s been fun to rip through a real page turning classic thriller for a change!

itsthejbon Podman 4.2.0

If you’re on regular docker and would like to go podman for rootless, you can take the middle step of migrating to rootless docker. Essential step, honestly - it’s significant work to get rootless working (but definitely worth it)

Haven’t done so myself yet, but rootless docker to podman ought to be more or less a direct switch

itsthejbon Write a note to your spouse every day

This is called a “covert contract”. It’s perhaps the key part of “nice” behaviour that is everything but - you can’t tie someone up in a “deal” that they never agreed to. Even worse, punishing someone else for not keeping up their side of the non-negotiated “deal”

itsthejbon My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

I suppose it’s indicative of why the feature was removed, that I wasn’t aware of most of the features mentioned in the article

itsthejbon Finland to Become the First EU Country to Test Digital Passports

The trick is to have a backup phone. I’ve been tending to keep an older generation iPhone, usually bought refurbished. I use it for run tracking, and have taken it on trips in the past as an “internet diet” device. It has access to my Bitwarden, Authy, etc, but keep installed apps to a minimum. Currently an iPhone 8

itsthejbon UK's largest tunnel cutting head lowered into its London shaft

Yes. Frankly, the continued over centralisation of the country around London seems to me to be the single greatest threat to the future prosperity of the country

itsthejbon Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records tell a different story

In Berlin, the inside smoking laws are pretty much never enforced. Some bars have dedicated smoking rooms, but many don’t. As for clubs, you can mostly expect smoking indoors. A lot of people smoke, so you _will_ encounter smokey environments when out and about, especially during the winter

itsthejbon Marc Andreessen says he’s for new housing, but records tell a different story

Throwing in my few pennies regarding my experiences living in cities.

Having lived in a few well known places, with different urban planning characteristics:

- Tokyo. Very praised for its successes, and there are quite a few: extremely liberal zoning (it seems), based around mass transit rather than cars (great!). Despite the small living space sizes for some, reportedly still very affordable, wide low/med/high density options for at various price-points spread all over. On the other hand, rarely worth having more than prefab buildings (earthquakes), masssssive sprawl, and legendarily horrendous commutes for those living in the suburbs. More than half the city is really quite ugly, grey and concrete.

- Berlin. Lots to like based on good previous planning decisions, and that war-time destruction and reunification somewhat provided opportunities to modernise. The city centre is mostly medium-density 5/6 storey apartment buildings. This seems to be a great sweet-spot that packs in a lot of people, but still leads to a strong community feeling in neighbourhoods. Even in the city centre, extremely green, and very accessible nature thanks to effective public transport. On the other hand, the last few decades of success may have had a lot to do with its historical anomalies, and now that it's normalising in lines with other similar cities, feels like these benefits have been drying up.

- London. Creaking under the legacy of its historical city centre. Planned under the assumption that of course everyone is living in multi-million Pound townhouses in Zone 1. Everyone else is SOL; the rest is low density suburbs with transit that forces most journeys to be via the centre, since there is no outer ring line (great in Berlin, not so great in Tokyo). Seems hardly any medium density: endless neighbourhoods of single family homes, or skyscrapers.

Anyway, none of this is new. It seems pretty clear that the political inability to fix these issues are a massive drain on economies already, and this will only get worse in the future with increasing urbanisation. Frankly, seems the only solution is building entire new cities. Asia has certainly benefited from this in the 20th century...

My thoughts

itsthejbon Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/mealime-meal-plans-recipes/id1...

Mealime. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I originally bought it because I liked the planned meals that have a nice overlap of ingredients, so you end up with a surprisingly small shopping list for a range of different meals

But also, the recipes are all a nice medium complexity: 99.9% of ingredients are easily available from any supermarket, even discounters

They clearly have a small number of chefs, so the recipes overlap in ways that really let you improve your skills. I went from so so in the kitchen, to decently skilled

It also lets you build plans based around what’s left in your pantry

Fantastic app. Take my money

itsthejbon Why are McDonald’s Self Service Kiosks so hackable?

Can confirm the usability problems - during the recent brief heatwave I popped into a local store to treat myself to a rare guilty pleasure of a McFlurry. After confirming, printer paper error pops up, giving the option to continue. Clicked ok, but no re-presentation of the order number. Could remember it anyway, but unimpressive for a mega corp

itsthejbon Airbnb will up its penalty for hosts who cancel last-minute from $100 to $1k

Congrats to Airbnb for, a decade after they first became big, finally doing something to address the number one reason why the service leaves people with a sour taste, and at worst leaves customers in severe jeopardy

General statement, other than probably getting your money back, they do next to nothing to support customers when something goes wrong

itsthejbon Former PM Abe Shinzo dies after being shot

Excellent comment. The audio in that scene is stunningly effective. I can’t think of any other gun fight scene in cinema that gets anywhere near close to that level of realism

itsthejbon Ask HN: I’m 41 and still unmarried – what should I do?

I’d warn the poster to be wary of descriptions like this of meeting “the one” - it seems already that she might be a bit too close to well marketed content that sells the dream of this experience of being a “lightning bolt from heaven”. That expectation is very appealing from romantic standpoint of lifting oneself out life’s mostly dreary mundanity…. However in my experience that/those incredibly intense first experiences have NEVER failed to be anything but (at best) the crushing disappointment of baseless assumptions meeting reality, and at worst the beginning of a “situation” with someone with highly questionable goals, morals and expectations

THE SUCCESSFUL relationships I’ve had have unfailing started with a tone of calm, comfort, and unexpectedly cosy familiarity. Not the emotional explosion everyone seems to want to hold out for, but is something that is a base to build on